NAME
dialign2-2 - Multiple alignment program using the segment-to-segment
approach
SYNOPSIS
dialign2-2 [options] [seq_file]
seq_file is the name of the input sequence file; this must be a
multiple FASTA file (all sequences in one file).
DESCRIPTION
dialign2-2 is a program that constructs alignments from gapfree pairs
of similar segments of the sequences. If (possibly) coding nucleic acid
sequences are to be aligned, DIALIGN optionally translates the compared
‘nucleic acid segments´ to ‘peptide segments´ according to the genetic
code -- without presupposing any of the three possible reading frames,
so all combinations of reading frames get checked for significant
similarity.
By default, DIALIGN creates a single file containing
· An alignment of the input sequences in DIALIGN format.
· The same alignment in FASTA format.
· A sequence tree in PHYLIP format. This tree is constructed by
applying the UPGMA clustering method to the DIALIGN similarity
scores. It roughly reflects the different degrees of similarity
among sequences. For detailed phylogenetic analysis, we recommend
the usual methods for phylogenetic reconstruction.
The format of the output files is documented in
/usr/share/doc/dialign/USER_GUIDE.gz. The FASTA, CLUSTALW and MSF
output formats are optionally available (see OPTIONS).
OPTIONS
-afc
Creates additional output file "*.afc" containing data of all
fragments considered for alignment. WARNING: this file can be HUGE!
-afc_v
Like "-afc" but verbose: fragments are explicitly printed. WARNING:
this file can be EVEN BIGGER!
-anc
Anchored alignment. Requires a file seq_file.anc containing anchor
points.
-cs
If segments are translated, not only the ‘Watson strand´ but also
the ‘Crick strand´ is looked at.
-cw
Additional output file in CLUSTAL W format.
-ds
‘DNA alignment speed up´. Non-translated nucleic acid fragments are
taken into account only if they start with at least two matches.
Speeds up DNA alignment at the expense of sensitivity.
-fa
Additional output file in FASTA format.
-ff
Creates file *.frg containing information about all fragments that
are part of the respective optimal pairwise alignmnets plus
information about consistency in the multiple alignment.
-fn out_file
Output files are named out_file.extension.
-fop
Creates file *.fop containing coordinates of all fragments that are
part of the respective pairwise alignments.
-fsm
Creates file *.fsm containing coordinates of all fragments that are
part of the final alignment
-iw
Overlap weights switched off (by default, overlap weights are used
if up to 35 sequences are aligned). This option speeds up the
alignment but may lead to reduced alignment quality.
-lgs
‘Long genomic sequences´ - combines the following options: -ma,
-thr 2, -lmax 30, -smin 8, -nta, -ff, -fop, -ff, -cs, -ds, -pst.
-lgs_t
Like "-lgs" but with all segment pairs assessed at the peptide
level (rather than ´mixed alignments´ as with the "-lgs" option).
Therefore faster than -lgs but not very sensitive for non-coding
regions.
-lmax x
Maximum fragment length = x (default: x = 40 or x = 120 for
‘translated´ fragments). Shorter x speeds up the program but may
affect alignment quality.
-lo
(Long Output) Additional file *.log with information abut fragments
selected for pairwise alignment and about consistency in
multi-alignment proceedure.
-ma
‘mixed alignments´ consisting of P-fragments and N-fragments if
nucleic acid sequences are aligned.
-mask
Residues not belonging to selected fragments are replaced by ‘*´
characters in output alignment (rather than being printed in
lower-case characters)
-mat
Creates file *mat with substitution counts derived from the
fragments that have been selected for alignment.
-mat_thr t
Like "-mat" but only fragments with weight score > t are
considered.
-max_link
"Maximum linkage" clustering used to construct sequence tree
(instead of UPGMA).
-min_link
"Minimum linkage" clustering used.
-mot
"Motif" option.
-msf
Separate output file in MSF format.
-n
Input sequences are nucleic acid sequences. No translation of
fragments.
-nt
Input sequences are nucleic acid sequences and ‘nucleic acid
segments´ are translated to ‘peptide segments´.
-nta
‘No textual alignment´. Textual alignment suppressed. This option
makes sense if other output files are of intrest -- e.g. the
fragment files created with -ff, -fop, -fsm or -lo.
-o
Fast version, resulting alignments may be slightly different.
-ow
Overlap weights enforced (By default, overlap weights are used only
if up to 35 sequences are aligned since calculating overlap weights
is time consuming). Warning: overlap weights generally improve
alignment quality but the running time increases in the order
O(n^4) with the number of sequences. This is why, by default,
overlap weights are used only for sequence sets with < 36
sequences.
-pst
"Print status". Creates and updates a file *.sta with information
about the current status of the program run. This option is
recommended if large data sets are aligned since it allows the user
to estimate the remaining running time.
-smin x
Minimum similarity value for first residue pair (or codon pair) in
fragments. Speeds up protein alignment or alignment of translated
DNA fragments at the expense of sensitivity.
-stars x
Maximum number of ‘*´ characters indicating degree of local
similarity among sequences. By default, no stars are used but
numbers between 0 and 9, instead.
-stdo
Results written to standard output.
-ta
Standard textual alignment printed (overrides suppression of
textual alignments in special options, e.g. -lgs).
-thr x
Threshold T = x.
-xfr
"Exclude fragments". List of fragments can be specified that are
NOT considered for pairwise alignment.
General remark: If contradictory options are used, subsequent options
override previous ones, e.g.: dialign2-2 -nt -n seq_file runs the
program with the "-n" option (no translation!), while dialign2-2 -n -nt
seq_file runs it with the "-nt" option (translation!).
SEE ALSO
The full documentation is in /usr/share/doc/dialign/.
The website of dialign: http://dialign.gobics.de/
DIALIGN2 has been re-implemented in dialign-tx(1). See
http://dialign-tx.gobics.de/
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
You can create an environment variable ‘DIALIGN2_DIR´ pointing to a
directory where the substitution matrices are (see FILES). When
installed from the Debian package, it is not necessary to set this
environnement variable to run DIALIGN.
FILES
DIALIGN2 needs the files tp400_dna, tp400_prot, tp400_trans and BLOSUM.
When DIALIGN is installed from the Debian package, they are stored in
/usr/share/dialign/.
DIALIGN 2 uses the BLOSUM62 amino acid substitution matrix. In the
current version, it is NOT possible to replace BLOSUM62 by other
similarity matrices.
REFERENCE
B. Morgenstern (1999). DIALIGN 2: improvement of the segment-to-segment
approach to multiple sequence alignment. Bioinformatics 15, 211 - 218.
Public research assisted by DIALIGN should cite this article.
AUTHORS
Burkhard Morgenstern <bmorgen@gwdg.de>
Author of DIALIGN
Said Abdeddaim
Author of DIALIGN
Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>
Wrote this manpage
COPYRIGHT
DIALIGN was written by Burkhard Morgenstern and Said Abdeddaim at
University of Bielefeld (FSPM and International Graduate School in
Bioinformatics and Genome Research), GSF (ISG, IBB, MIPS/IBI), North
Carolina State University, Universite de Rouen, MPI fuer Biochemie
(Martinsried), University of Goettingen, Institute of Microbiology and
Genetics.
This manual page was adapted from the DIALIGN manual by Charles Plessy
<plessy@debian.org> for the Debian system (but may be used by others).
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, Version 2.1
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU Lesser General Public
License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL.
Copyright © 1999 Burkhard Morgenstern (for DIALIGN)
Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2008 Charles Plessy (for this manpage)